


An Empty Cup

by peridium



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Dean Sulks On An Empty Moon: The Fic, Dean in Space, First Time, M/M, discussion of canon character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 08:16:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4618116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peridium/pseuds/peridium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It takes almost no time for Dean to get used to the coldness of space. The darkness, the emptiness, the nothingness. Actually, he kind of likes it at first.</i> And then Castiel comes to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Empty Cup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [casfallsinlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/casfallsinlove/gifts).



> A happy belated birthday to Charlotte, who is so lovely it defies explanation and logic. ♥ So here's some self-indulgent "Dean lives in space" fic following 10.23; obviously diverging as if Dean agreed to Death's proposition of LIVING IN SPACE FOREVER and that was the end of that. The title is from the poem "Yellow Stars and Ice" by Susan Stewart.
> 
> I'm over on Tumblr [here](http://sunbeamdean.tumblr.com).

It takes almost no time for Dean to get used to the coldness of space. The darkness, the emptiness, the nothingness. Actually, he kind of likes it at first. It’s just him and the Mark and the little hut Death had whipped up for him. Amenities included, if you count oxygen, two fluorescent lights that never go out, and a couple weird pulp novels from the 1930s as _amenities_.

There’s nothing for Dean to fight, so he fights himself. He pummels the blank white walls with his fists and watches the lacerations knit back together. He holds his bloody knuckles up to the single window and the red gleams dully against the star-spangled black of what passes for his view.

His blood is still warm, so that’s something human left of him. When he touches two fingers to his own cheek, they seem hot against the chill that’s turned standard for him.

He never got to say goodbye to either of them. Never got to say sorry to Cas. His flesh won’t even hang onto the regret he tries to carve into it with fingernails and teeth. Everything heals up neat, the Mark protecting its own.

 

Castiel’s hand, broad and capable as it cups Dean’s elbow, feels so scalding it’s like he’s branding Dean all over again.

“What,” Dean says, “the fuck.” It’s been days, uncountable this far from the sun, since he last spoke to someone other than himself out loud. He was starting to think all the words had rusted in his throat.

Cas cocks his head. He doesn’t let go of Dean; he looks just the same as he had before Dean beat the shit out of him. Fuck, those memories haven’t softened much with time.

“You’re so cold,” Cas says with a frown. His fingers press into the skin just next to the Mark, whorls of bright heat. Are all people warm like this or is Cas just a freak now that he’s got the engine of his grace whirring away inside him again?

“Yeah,” Dean says. He tries to clear his throat and chokes on a cough instead; Cas hangs onto him through it. “Yeah, uh, they forgot to turn on the radiator up here. Super’s a lazy asshole, lemme tell you.”

“Death likes you, actually.” Cas ducks his head like he’s hiding a smile, draws the pad of his thumb up the inside of Dean’s arm. “This is more consideration than he would show most humans. He even left Sam a note—cursory, but still.”

“Flattered, but I said what the fuck.” Didn’t he? Jesus. He’s not even sure he’s not imagining this, the spray of dark hair curling at the back of Cas’ neck against his collar.

Cas steps closer. Too close, Dean’s pretty sure, but Cas has always been like that, and there’s literally no one else on this godforsaken hunk of rock to judge Dean for kind of liking it. “It took me a while to track you down. You’re very far from home.”

Dean could have guessed that. The stars don’t look the way they did when he was a kid and his mom pointed out constellations to him from his bedroom window.

“So you tracked me down,” he says. “Congrats. What for?”

For a second, Cas sighs and shuts his eyes. His eyelashes are crescents of black framed against the tired circles that give his face half its character. “Is it such a stretch to believe that I missed you?”

“Cas,” Dean starts. “I dunno if you remember, but the last time we talked wasn’t exactly—”

“No,” Cas cuts him off, “it wasn’t. But I’m okay, and you’re living on a moon billions of miles from your home. Those aren’t even Raymond Chandler’s best work.” He chuckles under his breath, like judging hardboiled crime writers is hilarious. “Maybe we could call it even.”

Now, when Cas lifts his hand from Dean’s skin, everything’s cold all over again. It hits Dean that he hasn’t shaved in months. “Yeah, well. Sorry anyway.”

Cas shrugs and taps two fingertips to Dean’s knuckles, as if he knows how many times Dean’s split them trying to get the injuries to stay put longer than a few minutes. “I’ll be back. Please don’t hurt yourself.”

Dean doesn’t sleep anymore, not if he can help it, but five minutes after Cas is gone, he’s convinced himself the whole visit was a dream. Better than waiting around for him to come back.

 

“Jesus,” Dean says lowly. “You didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t,” Cas agrees, “but I wanted to.”

The books aren’t even used. Crisp unbroken spines, hundreds of pages so neat sitting there that Dean wants to pick them up and rub them against his freshly-shaven cheeks. Yeah, Cas brought him razors and shaving cream, too.

They don’t talk much. It’s a weird relief, because Dean’s not totally sure he remembers how. There’re about a million questions he wants to ask, but he’s scared of the answers, and scared that if he gets them all, Cas won’t see a reason to come back.

So he sits on the floor with his legs crossed and reads. Swords and sorcery and swashbuckling princesses. He’s slow as hell after all this time, wading through paragraphs like they’re made of molasses while Cas watches him with his hands folded in his lap and his expression unreadably serious.

“I’ll bring you more,” Cas promises, the last thing he says before he’s gone with the rustling sound of wings flapping. It’s insane to hear out in the void of space. Dean wishes he weren’t so fucking terrified that he’ll never hear it again.

 

“I could,” Cas says the next time around, touching Dean’s shoulder, “if you want—”

Dean’s jaw clenches. “Don’t.”

“Okay.”

So instead of taking Dean home, Cas brings home into the outer reaches of space. He tells him that Claire and Sheriff Mills are getting along well; that Claire and Alex are a duo so incorrigible that some of Jody’s text messages to Cas are _in all capital letters, Dean_ ; that Sam is wearing his hair back and running way too many miles every day and reorganizing the library at the bunker.

Dean listens, and it feels good. He missed the low rumble of Cas’ voice. Sometimes Cas touches him—his hair, his cheek, his knee—while he talks, or catches Dean with the tail end of a gesture.

When Cas is gone, Dean goes hollow and tender inside. He hugs his knees, sits with his back to the wall and faces the window, pictures Cas and Sam puttering around the bunker with each other. Cas always has his coat on when he comes here, probably because it’s cold as balls, but maybe at home he wears T-shirts. Maybe he takes Dean’s old button-downs and rolls the sleeves up to his elbows. It hurts to think about it and it hurts to know that it’s probably real and he doesn’t stop, wouldn’t stop for the world.

 

“Oh my god,” Dean says, nearly unintelligible around his mouthful of pie, “marry me.”

Cas raises an eyebrow and says soberly, “There aren’t many chapels in this part of the galaxy.”

Dean grunts, shoveling the last bite into his mouth. It’s store-bought, and for a second he misses his own oven back home so bad that his palms shiver, but it tastes like heaven after all these months. Better, actually—Heaven’s kind of a ripoff, in Dean’s opinion.

He doesn’t really need food, but he misses it. Cas sorta gets it, and sometimes he comes bearing gifts: beef jerky, Lucky Charms, slightly squished hamburgers from various fast food places.

“If you ever come home,” Cas starts.

“ _Cas._ ”

Dean licks the tines of his fork without looking at Cas, longing throbbing just under the veneer of anger in the pit of his stomach. When he glances up, Cas’ lips are parted, his eyes dark.

“You’re not doing anyone any good keeping yourself exiled up here,” Cas says, his voice hard and flat.

Dean snorts out a laugh and flexes the fingers of his right hand. “You don’t think stopping a bunch of innocent people from getting torn apart by some asshole with an ugly tattoo counts as doing any good?”

Cas is quiet for a sec. He leans across the table—it’s a rough-hewn thing, fuck knows where Death got it—and touches the side of Dean’s face with the tips of his fingers. Dean needs a shave again.

“There are ways. Not the Book of the Damned—we gave that up when you left. We would figure something out.”

Dean’s heard himself say that too many times. He turns his cheek into Cas’ touch, letting his eyelashes brush Cas’ fingers. “Look, man, it’s better this way.”

Cas pushes his chair back from the table, looming over Dean for a moment before he stoops to press his mouth to Dean’s forehead. Still so damn warm. “I can keep waiting,” he says, and vanishes.

 

It’s dark. It’s always dark. Dean has been here, some hunk of dirt and rock spinning through nothingness and surrounded by nothingness, for what feels like at least half a year of normal earth time. There’s no way of keeping track and he’s scared to ask.

He’s sick of the nauseating hum of the fluorescent bulbs Death put in for him, but sitting in near-pitch blackness, hugging his knees to his chest, doesn’t feel much better. He closes his eyes and there are still little pricks of light, stars he doesn’t recognize, seared into the insides of his eyelids.

Cas brings light with him. Sparks of grace that fly around the room and stick to the walls, brighter than the landscape of constellations outside, and when he looks up Cas is right there, kneeling in front of him with his tie loose and his eyebrows drawn together.

“Hi,” Dean says.

“Dean.” Cas frowns and brushes his knuckles against Dean’s cheek. Too close like always, but by now Dean knows he likes that and he’s not gonna argue. “You were so golden once.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Dean says between gritted teeth.

For a moment, Cas looms. Then he’s kissing Dean’s forehead, his nose, the bristles of stubble at the hinge of his jaw. When his mouth skates close to Dean’s, Dean almost flinches: he probably tastes gross, like sulfur and the last buffalo jerky Cas brought him a week or so ago. They don’t have many toothbrushes in space.

He’s so occupied with his own self-consciousness, his mind so dulled and discombobulated by all the time he’s spent stewing in his own thoughts and self-loathing, that it’s only about thirty seconds later that it clicks that Cas was practically kissing him.

“Hey,” he says. His voice comes out like the last gasp of a demon leaving its meatsuit: smoky and ashamed. “Wait, I don’t. Cas.”

Cas touches his forehead to Dean’s. “Will you come outside with me? I’ll help you breathe.”

 _You’ve been doing that already_ , Dean thinks but doesn’t say. He nods and lets Cas pull him to his feet. If it wasn’t for the Mark keeping him in shape, he’d be flabby and useless by now, his muscles atrophied and his joints stiff.

It’s easy to slip his fingers through the spaces between Cas’ and follow him outside. The Mark seethes on his arm—it doesn’t like Cas, doesn’t like the flagrant use of Cas’ grace to fill Dean’s lungs with oxygen—and Dean ignores it.

 

“See that?”

Dean squints. Their hands are still loosely linked. “Uh, see what?”

Cas knocks his shoulder lightly against Dean’s. Probably a gesture of affection; Dean accidentally taught him that, that you hit people to show you love them sometimes. “That constellation. Right there.” He lifts Dean’s hand with his own and points. “Shoulders, there. Feet.”

“You just made that up.”

“Yes,” Cas agrees. “People made up all the figures you can see from your home, too.”

“Okay.” Dean curls his hand tighter around Cas’. “So what’s that one called?”

Cas hums under his breath, a thoughtful sound. “Joanna. Brave and impulsive and an excellent young hunter in training. Legend has it that she gave her life for an important cause spearheaded by two dysfunctional brothers and a half-fallen angel.”

Something hard and itchy catches in Dean’s throat. He swallows. “Sounds like a real badass girl.”

“A lovely woman, yes.”

Cas doesn’t stop there. The cadence of his voice steady and wistful, he spins tales of Singer, gruff and protective and immortalized by the stars; Kevin, still poised with his chin up and his Super Soaker cocked toward the nearest sun; and even Tessa, shadowy and indistinct and beautiful nonetheless.

It’s Dean, his heart and stomach in knots, who drags Cas into their first kiss, pulling heat and air and life straight from Cas’ mouth into his own.

 

“Don’t you—oh, fuck—have to get back—”

“No.” Cas’ eyes flash as he looks up, the angles of his face framed by the thickness of Dean’s bare thighs. He’d cleaned Dean with a touch, patched the holes in his sparse collection of jeans and T-shirts only to tear them right back off of him and bear him down toward the hard floor of the cabin. “Things aren’t the way they used to be. Not without you.” He bends to suck a bruise into the crease of Dean’s thigh, just below his hip.

Dean whines and scrabbles for purchase, but there’s nothing. Only the wildness of Cas’ hair, tufts and snarls where Dean’s grabbed at it and curled strands around his fingers and done his best not to fuck up into Cas’ mouth like an asshole.

He’s touched himself a few times up here—who wouldn’t? Alone and bored and going out of his mind, first with furious energy and then with the crushing onset of eternity and emptiness ahead of him. His own hand fast and furious around himself with Cas’ mouth pink and generous in his imagination, shame just as poignant in his gut as desire and pleasure.

Bare hands against bare skin, though, _God_ , after all this time. Cas’ palms are broad against his waist, smooth fingertips that trace the lingering rise of his stomach; Cas’ hand is so big it cups all of him, aching dick and balls, out of the way as he kisses Dean so thorough and thoughtful it makes Dean want to cry as bad as he wants to come.

“Cas,” he says, “Cas, come on, let me, I can’t—”

He can’t let Cas do this for him like he’s a charity case. Can’t let the obvious outline of Cas’ dick hard in his boxers go neglected. He may be some half-feral abomination living in exile, but he’s still Dean Winchester, and that’s sure as fuck not the way he does things.

They curl around each other, the waxing and waning halves of a moon like the one Dean’s made into a shitty little home. Dean swallows Cas down with his mind blank and his heart full, the human taste of him so good on the back of his tongue, and then there’s Cas’ mouth thoughtful and eager, tracing up the seam of his balls all the way to the head of his dick and sinking back down like every inch of skin is as good as the last.

Reaching to hang onto Cas’ hand, pushing his tongue against the vein pulsing along the underside of Cas’ erection, everything is hot. The blood rushing in Dean’s veins, his dick in the welcoming space of Cas’ mouth and throat, _everything_. He’s been cold for months, maybe longer, hanging onto every one of Cas’ brief white-hot touches and dismissing the call of the Mark nestled into his elbow, and now everything is warm all at once. Everything, the muscles of Cas’ thighs sliding and bunching as he moans around his mouthful of Dean and arches closer.

Cas comes first, his body going taut and his mouth pressed to Dean’s stomach, murmuring _Dean, Dean, Dean_ like it’s the only English word he can remember. This would have been even better on a bed, in a real house, lamplight and soft sheets and a shower waiting for them.

Dean’s so worked up by the thought of Cas wet and smiling with suds in his hair that he comes down Cas’ throat with a gasp, embarrassingly fast.

Cas crawls up his body after, nosing at Dean’s jaw and kissing just below his ear. There are things you’re supposed to say at a time like this, Dean is pretty sure. Platitudes, maybe. Human niceties are starting to escape him, and he should probably be scared, but Cas is kissing him full on the mouth, tasting like Dean, and he splays his fingers against Cas’ shoulder blades and kisses him back.

 

“You,” Cas tells him with his head pillowed on Dean’s chest, “would make a good constellation yourself.”

It’s a compliment; Dean knows that. Cas could make it happen, could pluck out any number of images of Dean amongst the stars—he’s seen Dean from every angle imaginable, at his best and at his worst. If anyone could do it, it would be him. Dean could keep up his half-life surrounded by stars, waiting for Cas to bring him scraps of a human life and tracking the deterioration of his sense of self in between visits.

“Not yet,” Dean says. He pushes an unruly sweep of dark hair back around Cas’ ear. “Constellations are for dead people. I’m not dead yet.”

Cas hesitates. Dean knows what he’s thinking: _this is just as bad as being dead; you’re certainly not alive_.

Dean’s voice shakes, but not too much, as he reaches for Cas’ hand and says, “I don’t wanna be dead anymore, is the thing.”

“Dean,” Cas says, low. Warning him. It’s fair: Dean had never let Cas broach the topic of Dean coming home.

“Like you said. We’ll figure something out.”

Cas laces their fingers together, his grip tight. “I’ll make you a welcome-home pie.”

“ _I’ll_ make _me_ a welcome-home pie,” Dean says, “and you can eat it. You earned it.”


End file.
